His cheeks should flame and his brow should furl,
His bosom should heave and his heart should glow,
And his fist be ever ready for a knock-down blow.
Not a lot about her had changed since Huntingdon. She was still chain-smoking, and she preferred men’s pajamas to nightgowns. “She was a little mannish-looking,” recalled one sorority sister. “When girls had long hair and did things with it, her hair was short.”5 Another chose the word matronly to describe Nelle: “A little bit thick in the middle. Nothing very stylish.” However, “she had beautiful large, dark brown eyes that were quite piercing.”6
In the evenings, the girls chattered about their days and their boyfriends, but not Nelle. “She was just sort of a loner. She just sat there and looked. I don’t remember any contact between her and anybody,” said a sorority sister. At mealtimes, “she never entered into any conversations with the girls at the table, but was more of an observer. I always had the feeling that she found us very shallow, silly, and young in which case she was absolutely right.”7
On Friday and Saturday nights, when the other Chi O girls were bustling around, trying to be ready in time for dates or dances, Nelle never had any plans. No one recalled seeing her with a boyfriend. Practically every weekend, she tromped through the living room, golf club bag slung over her shoulder, heading out for a few rounds. The way she dressed for the golf course, just jeans and a sweatshirt, raised a few eyebrows. “That wasn’t the way we dressed,” said a Chi O sister.8 The pronouncement on Nelle’s outerwear was that it was “very different.”
“I’m ashamed to admit that we made fun of her,” said Barbara Moore, a member of Phi Mu sorority. “Never around her, but behind her back. Today she would be called a campus nerd.”9
* * *
After a year in the Chi Omega house, Nelle moved out. She would sometimes take her meals at the house and attended chapter meetings, but her sorority sisters thought she had her mind on other things. The reason was she had discovered a more suitable group of friends—commentators on campus life and its traditions and, most important, serious writers. She called them “the most casual colony” at the university, and they greeted her as one of their own. They were “the various editors, feature writers, proofreaders and kibitzers who sling together,” as she put it, the University of Alabama campus publications.10
Nelle had found her way to the enormous Alabama Union almost as soon as she arrived on campus the fall of her sophomore year. On the third floor was the office of the student publications, a large room divided by a row of file cabinets acting as a line separating journalism from creative writing. On one side sat the staff of the Crimson White campus newspaper; on the other, the writers and editors for the Rammer Jammer, the campus humor magazine, named for the thunderous cheer shouted by Crimson Tide football fans: “Rammer jammer, rammer jammer, rammer jammer!”
Nelle introduced herself to one of the Crimson White editors, Bill Mayes, “a lanky, Klan-hating six-footer from somewhere in Mississippi.”11 She offered her services as a stringer—someone to cover the odd meeting or event now and then. But most of the news beats had already gone to journalism majors.
Not discouraged, she went around the wall of file cabinets to the Rammer Jammer side of the room. That staff consisted of novice satirists and humor writers, under pressure to produce a funny quarterly publication. Good submissions were sought after and prized. Nelle got her hand in right away by submitting a few pieces for the homecoming parody—a takeoff on Esquire, a fashion magazine for men. In the December issue, the masthead listed her name as a staff member. A Crimson White staffer recalled hearing Nelle’s voice on the Rammer Jammer side of the file cabinets, and years later, when she read To Kill a Mockingbird, said, “I could just hear her talking in the book.”12
During the following summer, Nelle stayed on campus, catching up on a few credits but also because she knew the Crimson White would need writers. She suggested an idea to Bill Mayes, who was taking over as summer newspaper editor: What if she wrote an at-large column, she asked, that commented on the passing scene—something to lighten up the editorial page? He agreed. For a non–journalism major, it was a coup.
She dubbed her column “Caustic Comment,” an irregular feature that delivered doses of self-parody, exaggerated descriptions, and long-winded gags. John T. Hamner, a newspaperman in Alabama, was struck by the tone of “bright, brittle, sophomoric but sharp humor.… Her specialty was debunking, taking quick sharp jabs at the idols and mores of the time and place.”13 The column was at its strongest when Nelle took aim at silly advertisements on the radio, or the amount of red tape students had to endure. She didn’t bother to conceal her fondness for cursing, either:
There is a striking difference between University students now and those of five years ago in regard to their interests. Formerly, the minds of the Capstone [University of Alabama] undergrads were almost solely occupied with who belonged to what fraternity and the respective merits of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey as bandleaders.
The high moment in an undergrad’s life was the interfraternity dances at the end of each year. He planned for months ahead just who he would escort to each dance, and how many invitations to pre-dance cocktail parties it would be socially acceptable to decline. He frantically rushed around trying to find the correct tie to wear with tails, and he considered himself a bright and shining social light if he wore clothes exactly like someone else’s.
Contrast the undergrad of 1946. He doesn’t give a damn what kind of pants he wears to a formal, his major interests are not who’s pinned to whom or how many quarts per capita his fraternity brothers consume each day. There is an awakening of interest in the lives of students in the things that really count.14
At times she used shock value to get readers’ attention. Writing a book review, for instance, she interjected some tough talk about race relations, a subject usually avoided in polite company. In her opinion, too many Southern writers treated racism romantically. For avoiding this pitfall, she praised the book under review, Night Fire, written by a popular instructor on campus, Edward Kimbrough. She relished Kimbrough’s portrayal of a character named “Turkey Littlepage, who is reminiscent of all the county sheriffs in South Alabama and Mississippi. Mean, utterly stupid, and with violent prejudices, Turkey tramps through the pages of Night Fire as a living memorial to all the miserable incompetents the South elects as enforcers of the law.”15
Such language was not often seen in print on campus. The University of Alabama in the 1940s, the “Country Club of the South,” as it was nicknamed, was a “profoundly conservative community,” remembered a history and political science major. “There were a few faculty members who expressed reservations about some of the prevailing political and social orthodoxies, but they received little student support and were generally regarded as harmless eccentrics. The one subject never discussed, in my experience, was race relations. The prevailing view was that there was no reason to upset the status quo, and most were willing to continue existing conditions indefinitely.”16
But the Crimson White wasn’t the best forum for Nelle’s outspoken opinions, anyway. She “dressed differently, ate differently, talked differently than most. She thought differently, too,” said John T. Hamner, “and those differences made her stand out.”17 So at the end of the summer of 1946, when Nelle was appointed editor in chief of the Rammer Jammer, it seemed at last that she could give her pen full throttle.
The humor magazine was wide open for creative writers with an offbeat slant on things. Taking over the top spot was going to be a heavy responsibility for her. That first semester as editor in chief, Nelle also started law school as a junior, which the University of Alabama allowed undergraduates to do.
Regardless, she proceeded with equal energy as both journalist and law student. Her quirkiness was a particularly good fit with the humor magazine’s reputation. She is an “impressive figure as she strides down the corridor of New Hall at all hours attir
ed in men’s green striped pajamas,” said the Crimson White in a front-page article.
Quite frequently she passes out candy to unsuspecting freshmen; when she emerges from their rooms they have subscribed to the Rammer Jammer.… Her Utopia is a land with the culture of England and the government of Russia; her idea of heaven is a place where diligent law students and writers ascend after death and can stay up forever without Benzedrine [like caffeine].… Wild about football, she played center on the fourth grade team in Monroeville, her hometown. Her favorite person is her sister “Bear.” … Lawyer Lee will spend her future in Monroeville. As for literary aspirations she says, “I shall probably write a book some day. They all do.”18
When the yearbook photographer visited the offices of the Rammer Jammer, Nelle hammed it up by posing as a harried editor glaring at her typewriter, a cigarette burning perilously low in one hand.
It was demanding, preparing for the law school classes in torts, real estate, and contract law, yet Nelle managed the Rammer Jammer’s staff of 16, too. “She was a lot of fun, she just made it go,” said one of the self-described “lowly persons” on the staff.19 Nelle contributed at least one piece to every issue, including Now Is the Time for All Good Men, a one-act play making fun of a proposed racist amendment to the Alabama State constitution.
Her so-called Boswell Amendment would have required prospective voters to interpret the U.S. Constitution to the satisfaction of the local registrar. At the start of the play, Nelle introduces a senator, the Hon. F. B. MacGillacuddy, who argues strenuously for the passage of the amendment, which is nothing more than a trick to keep blacks from the polls. Once it passes, however, Senator MacGillacuddy fails the test, too, and is denied the right to vote! He appears before the United States Supreme Court, pleading, “My civil liberties are being threatened.… Whatta you going to do about it, boys?”20 As a piece of satire, it was more mature in style and content than most of what usually appeared in the magazine.
Even though Nelle enjoyed her stint at the helm of the Rammer Jammer, at the close of the 1946–47 school year, she severed her ties with it. One year as editor in chief was enough. Her law school classes were demanding, and she was forced to spend most evenings studying at the library until midnight. Trying to balance writing with law—a combination she thought possible—was proving to be next to impossible. Something had to give.
Classes ended in May, and Nelle went home by train. For once, she didn’t stay on campus for the summer session. She was needed in Monroeville to help with a happy occasion: the marriage of her brother, Edwin, to Sara Anne McCall, her friend and classmate since childhood.
Edwin was seven years older than Sara and, according to friends, hadn’t given her a second look when they were growing up together. When he graduated from high school, she was still in elementary school. Later she enrolled at Huntingdon College the same year Nelle did, but Edwin was in the Army Air Corps by then. In June 1944, he participated in the Normandy invasion, flew support for General Patton’s Third Army in Europe, and received the Purple Heart. In 1946, Captain Lee returned to Alabama and reenrolled in Auburn University to complete his degree in industrial engineering. There he met up with Sara, who had transferred from Huntingdon. They hit it off immediately and fell in love. The wedding was set for Saturday, June 28, 1947, in Monroeville.
Inside the church, garlands of Southern smilax and tall baskets of Snow Queen gladioli decorated the aisle and altar. Sara wore a dress with a high collar, full skirt, and long train that was a modern adaptation of an 1860 wedding gown on display in a museum in Richmond, Virginia. The reception was held outside at the bride’s home, an innovation that not many folks in Monroeville were familiar with, but the lovely coolness of the evening persuaded them it was a grand idea.
Everything would have been ideal for A. C. Lee as father of the groom, except that Nelle had arrived home troubled about the direction of her life.
The crux of the matter was that she wasn’t enjoying law school. She had enrolled, she said later, because “it was the line of least resistance,” meaning that she realized how strongly her father wanted to welcome another lawyer into the family.21 But she was discovering that she hated studying law—and that was the term she used, hated. A friend on the campus newspaper never doubted that “she could have been a good lawyer. Her mind was so quick, but she just wanted to write.”22
If she framed her dilemma in similar terms to her father—that writing was winning out over law—he might have countered that she could take over the Monroe Journal from him and Alice. After all, he was almost 70. He was looking forward to having a little more time for playing golf and serving on various committees in ways that weren’t too demanding. Just taking it easy. Weekly deadlines wouldn’t permit that, and Alice’s law practice was booming. So Nelle could do a real service by her family, the town, and the whole county if she took over the reins of the Journal after graduation. She didn’t have to join Barnett, Bugg & Lee, either, if she didn’t want to. But a law degree was always good insurance.
The rest of the summer must have been a bittersweet one in the Lee household. Edwin had made a fine marriage and let it be known that the couple would be settling down in Monroeville. Alice had decided to live at home permanently to help her parents, particularly her mother, whose health required regular visits to Vaughn Memorial Hospital in Selma, 75 miles away. Nelle, on the other hand, had thrown everybody for a loop. In August, she boarded the train at Evergreen and rode it north to Tuscaloosa, where she was determined to give law school one more try.
About 100 students were enrolled in law school for the 1947–48 school year, taught by 13 faculty members, all of whom were “on the younger side,” remembered Nelle’s classmate Daniel J. Meador, who would one day become an assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice. The number of women, however, he said, totaled less than a dozen. The whole group was small enough to fit “in the women’s rest room at the same time.”23
And they could usually be found in there, too, freshening up between classes. Nelle milled around in front of the mirrors with the others, but Mary Lee Stapp couldn’t recall ever having a conversation with her, “and she wouldn’t have initiated it. She never made a great effort to get to know anybody; she had her mind on what she had her mind on.”24 Jane Williams recalled Nelle from criminal law class, but “she would not have been noticed except for the fact that she was in a large class of males. She was habitually dressed in a baggy pullover, with a skirt and loafers—her hair pulled behind her ears and no makeup. To say that she was reclusive is an understatement. She was very quiet, spoke to no one—except when the instructor called on her to respond. Even then, she did so with as few words as possible.”25
The women, although they were few in number, demonstrated a tenacity equal to their male counterparts. None who attended during the years Nelle was enrolled flunked out. Moreover, they would not be intimidated. A certain criminal law professor, for example, tried to fluster female students by pressing them on the indelicate facts of sex crimes. One day, while he was questioning a student about the details of a rape case, attempting to maneuver her into a graphic description, she cut him off in midsentence: “Look,” she said, “you know about the male anatomy—why don’t you just tell us?” The class laughed and applauded.26
Meanwhile, Nelle continued to linger on the margins, disengaged. “Most of the women who were there knew each other, but most of us don’t remember her,” said a classmate.27 To drop out, though, would disappoint her father. Still, the dread she felt at facing exams she might not pass for sheer lack of interest threw a gloomy light on her future.
Unknown to her (though she would have been insulted if she knew), some of her classmates thought that Nelle and the law would not be a good match, either. One couldn’t picture Nelle abiding by the formalities of courtroom protocol. “I think lawyers sort of have to conform, and she’d just as soon tell you to go to hell as to say something nice and turn around and walk away.�
� I just couldn’t see her being interested in that sort of thing.”28
By spring 1948, it was obvious to Mr. Lee that his youngest daughter wasn’t showing anywhere near the same enthusiasm about practicing law that Alice had. So he agreed to provide an incentive—one that would acknowledge Nelle’s love of literature. Perhaps, he reasoned, she should have an experience that showed what a well-paying career like practicing law could provide, including the means to travel and write on the side. On April 29, 1948, the Monroe Journal announced, “Miss Nelle Lee, University of Alabama law student and daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Lee of Monroeville, has been accepted as an exchange student at Oxford University in England during the coming summer. She will sail from New York on June 16.”29
It would be a pilgrimage to the land of Nelle’s favorite British authors: Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Lamb, Henry Fielding, Samuel Butler, and all the others, who until now had lived for her only between the covers of books. And perhaps it would break the spell of her unhappiness.
* * *
On the morning Nelle arrived at the New York docks preparing to board the Marine Jumper, a converted troopship from the war, there was a festive feeling in the air. Nearly 600 young people were hugging their parents, posing for snapshots, and waving as they climbed the steep gangway. Nelle found a spot in the passengers’ quarters on one of the double bunks; in each room, there was one shower for 35 people—“just like you’d expect in the army,” commented one of the students.30
Then the ship got under way, assisted by a tugboat or two to point the ship’s bow toward the Atlantic. When New York had at last dipped below the horizon, coordinators from the exchange program assembled the students for a series of orientation programs. They provided lengthy sessions about the destination countries, their religions, social life, and economic problems after the war.
There was no curfew, so the main deck on starry nights was usually dotted with travelers lying on their backs, feeling the thrum of the 10,000-horsepower turbine underneath them as the ship rolled through the swells at 15 knots.
I Am Scout Page 6